14,768 women entrepreneurs led projects sanctioned in 2016-17: MSME Minister

New Delhi, Apr 5 (KNN) In a bid to encourage entrepreneurship among women, the government has provided financial assistance to women entrepreneurs in setting up over 14,768 projects in the year 2016-17 under the PMEGP, Minister of State (I/C) for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Giriraj Singh informed upper house.

The minister further said that a total of over Rs.389.49 crore subsidies was disbursed for these projects.

Dissecting the data further, Singh informed that the maximum number of projects sanctioned were from Assam followed by Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

“The maximum number of 1,484 projects were from Assam, followed by 1,387 in Uttar Pradesh, 1,248 in Tamil Nadu, 942 in Odisha, and 915 in Bihar, besides other States/UTs with varying number of projects”, an official release said.

Under the PMEGP scheme women entrepreneurs are provided 25% and 35% subsidies for the project set up in urban and rural areas respectively. The maximum cost of the project under PMEGP scheme is Rs. 25 lakhs for manufacturing sector units and Rs.10 lakhs for units under service sector. For women beneficiaries, their own contribution is only 5% of the project cost.

Besides PMEGP, Coir Board under the MSME Ministry is implementing the Skill Upgradation &Mahila Coir Yojana for attracting rural women artisans to set up coir industrial units.

Earlier talking to KNN, Sushma Joiya Pandit, Chairperson of Integrated Congress of Women Entrepreneurs (ICWE) informed that despite good figures, there have been a lot of cases in which an aspiring entrepreneur have been rejected and their credit request haven’t been sanctioned.

“Most of times, the banks reject the cases simply by saying that the project is not viable or they say that their target is completed”, she said.

Sushma mentioned over 34 cases in which the entrepreneurs despite documentation and training were not sanctioned loans, resulting in a lot of demotivation.

“Such behaviour of Banks will ruin the Industrial Development Projects of Government”, she lamented.  (With PIB Inputs) (KNN/DA)